Friday, June 10, 2011

Queen Asha

Show me your friends, and I will show you your future… I’ve learned over the years nothing could be more true about this saying… My early years in school were incredibly tough. Actually, they sucked. But through all the name-calling and the embarrassment of not being able to read or spell, there was one person that I was always happy to see each day. She sat beside me on the school bus and was always incredibly nice. I was shy and scared of everything back then, especially girls, and it felt like at that point there was absolutely no reason at all to go to school except for my soft spoken little friend named Asha that road the bus with me. She would always ask me how my day was going and chit-chat about life. For me, the fifteen minutes I would spend riding on the bus with her to and from school made the eight hours of hell in school worth going. Something else that sticks out to me about this time was her mother always waiting for her, standing in the gravel lot in front of their little fruit marketfor the bus to stop. She would wear these super cool outfits. Long flowing dresses with many bright and wonderful colors. Asha would get off the bus and her mother would put her arm around her in a loving way. At the time, with my forehead pressed against the glass bus window watching them walk away, I thought, What a wonderful mother she has. This must be where she’s learned to be so caring. I also remember seeing Asha and her mother at Cloth World around this time. I loved to run my fingers through the buttons in the Button-bin and, according to Asha, she loved hiding in the giant boards of cut by the yard cloth…
So, the next year rolled around and I was sent to a school that specialized in kids with dyslexia. All the kids in school were just like me. No one could spell or read very well and most had been through the God awful public school system… I was happy in a way to find so many other kids out there like myself. I could finally let my guard down and relax a little. Although it was a better place for me because I was not being picked on and ridiculed by my classmates, I missed my little friend from the bus… There was a reel void in my life and a yearning for the only friendship I had in such a difficult time. A longing for someone very special.

After spending three years going to school in Gainesville, I returned to public school and my friend was gone… Moved away… She was the first person I looked for… but she was gone and I was right back in the system of latchkey kids and hopeless promises.
So, some how I finished school, got married, and raised a kid. From time to time, I would pass the old fruit market and think of my friend from so long ago… Wondering where she ended up? I would even ask the current owners of the building, when I ran across them, if the original family ever stopped in. I know it sounds crazy, but she was the one good memory I clung to in my mind of a time that was very dark and difficult for me… A memory of happiness that seemed to transcend into a wonderful feeling when I looked back in my mind…Thirty years passed and I wondered if we would ever meet again…
Then came the internet, where the impossible became possible… And after all the years gone by, there she was… Like two kids on the playground, we picked right up where we left off… And it has truly meant the world to me…